Pages

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Tuesday Tutorial: Hand Stitching

It's Kathy Martin here with a tutorial for accenting your paper craft projects with hand stitching. Most of my scrapbook pages and cards include hand stitching because I love texture and detailing and I really like the way it looks. I often get questions about my stitching, people wondering if I use a machine or do it by hand. When I tell people I always hand stitch, their next question is how do I make my lines straight and how do I keep my card stock clean and without creases. So, today I’d like to show you some of the techniques I use.

For today’s tutorial I created this card using Doodlebug’s Colorwheel collection along with their Simply Sweet letter rub-ons and a limeade Boutique Button. Other supplies include card stock, Spellbinders dies, vellum, a pencil, paper piercer, needle and thread, and adhesives.

Your first step is to cut a piece of vellum and card stock the size of an A2 card which is 5 ½” x 4 ¼”. Then I used some Spellbinders Nesting Dies to create some circles in my vellum. Once I was finished making the circles, I applied a piece of tape to the top of the card to keep the vellum overlay centered on top of the card stock base.

Next I used a set of Spellbinders scalloped circle dies to create patterned paper circles that are one size larger than the circles that were cut in the vellum. You could also use the same circle dies if you don’t have a set of scalloped dies too.

Now add a piece of double stick tape to the bottom of your die cut circles and center them underneath each of the vellum circles. Once it looks centered, just press it down so it sticks to your card stock base.

After you have positioned all your patterned paper die cuts, use another piece of tape to secure the opposite side of the velum overlay to the card stock base. Then center your round Spellbinders dies back over your circles and trace around the outside with a pencil to create a frame that you will use as a stitching pattern.

Once you have your frames traced, use an awl to pierce holes along your penciled circles at approximately 1/8” intervals.

When you have pierced all your penciled circles, erase the remaining pencil marks and begin stitching using a straight stitch.

After you are finished stitching, you have a pretty card base to accent. I used a pre-made die cut from the Doodlebug Collerwheel collection to embellish my card with.

Another way I like to add hand stitching to my projects is to pierce holes around the pattern of a die cut or patterned paper.

On this piece of Doodlebug paper you can see I used the pattern to pierce and stitch.

To further accent to my die cut, I added this butterfly Icons sticker.

Lastly I added a double sided die cut pennant that I applied the Simply Sweet rub-ons and limeade button to.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and spend some time playing with different ways to add some hand stitching to your next project.

Hi Mandy! Thanks for taking the time to comment on today's tutorial. Hand stitching doesn't have to take too much time. I have a project on my blog from Monday that shows how nice just a little hand stitching can look.